Content: What's your purpose?

Last week I wrote about how Content isn't necessarily King, but it is important. This week I am still on the subject of Content, but taking a look at it's simplest form: the purpose.

Have you ever been on a website that has a lot of writing, but none of it answers your question? How about going to website that has so many pages that you are unable to navigate through it because they decided that they needed to put every detail on it, yet it still doesn't answer your question?

I am sure all of us have experienced this in some way. And when we do experience this, it is absolutely frustrating and you wonder why this company even has a website or that they need a better one.

So how do you solve a problem like this?

To me, the solution is very simple.

Asking one singular question can solve a lot of this : What is the content's purpose?

In any English class that assigns an essay, the essay has a purpose like answering a question, analyzing a piece of literature, summarizing events or giving an opinion. Creating content for a website is exactly like this! For whatever reason, we do not like to edit our webpages and sometimes leave these tangents on it, which can confuse potential customers.

A perfect example of this is when I worked on my first internship. Most of my work consisted of content creation, specifically on a donor website. Before I started analyzing the website and breaking it down page by page, I asked them who they were targeting. I wanted to be specific so the page had just enough information that wasn't at novels length with random tangents throughout and to make sure it was speaking to the audience. It would have served me no purpose if I just started writing because it wouldn't be directed to anyone. The only person it would have been connecting to was myself and to be honest, I was not a part of their donor target, but more so there volunteer target age.

Understanding your audience is vital. I know last week I mentioned that content should be informational, start to form an emotional connection and has endless possibilities, but none of that matters if you don't know whom you are writing to.

Also during this first internship, there were many times that I would question them with what they wanted and ask them whether it was more appropriate to put it on the donor site or the client site. I did this not to rebel against them, but to make sure that they were thinking about the audience for each site. This non-profit specifically had separate websites, because they realized that the audiences were different but were not always thinking in that way when we were revamping the websites.

It is crucial to constantly ask yourself what is the purpose of it. If you are writing and it hits you that one of the paragraphs serves no purpose, then delete it off your page. Every word you type, every phrase you use, every paragraph those form needs to fit a purpose.

If the content on your page does not serve a purpose, then you need to go back and evaluate what you have and move forward from there.

Like I said last week, content is important, but if it serves no purpose then you are not utilizing the endless possibilities of content.